Rocket League, the popular competitive vehicular soccer game, will soon be getting an anti-cheat implementation, nearly a decade after its original launch. Psyonix announced on the game's official X account that it would be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat in Rocket League in an April update. The justifications for anti-cheat is to prevent DDoS attacks, improve bot detection, and more effectively ban cheaters in games. The announcement comes with a few caveats, though—specifically relating to how the addition of anti-cheat will affect competitive gameplay, offline LAN multiplayer, and gaming on Linux.

Unlike many high-profile EAC implementations, Rocket League will maintain compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck, and by extension other Linux gaming PCs and the upcoming Steam Machine via the Proton compatibility layer. Players will be able to disable EAC for offline play, in cases like local LAN multiplayer, or split-screen multiplayer. Additionally, the EAC implementation will eventually allow players in custom tournaments to run tournament-specific mods, and players will be able to run custom community content with EAC enabled at launch. The announcement also mentions "custom mod-inspired content" coming to Rocket League in the same April update.The full announcement reads:

Hey everyone, we want to confirm Easy Anti-Cheat coming to Rocket League on the Epic Games Store and Steam during Season 22. Adding Easy Anti-Cheat elevates our ability to detect and ban cheaters in real time, and is part of a broader effort that includes additional bot detection methods, and DDoS attack prevention.
We've seen your thoughts and questions on Easy Anti-Cheat. Here's what to expect in April.

Players on PC will have the option to launch Rocket League with Easy Anti-Cheat on or off. It will need to be enabled to queue for online matches, private matches, and tournaments. Mods will not run when it's enabled.

When Easy Anti-Cheat is turned off, you can run mods while playing offline matches, training, LAN matches, and viewing Replays while using custom video editing tools. Community content like Steam Workshop maps is playable with or without Easy Anti-Cheat enabled, but you'll want it off if you run mods on top of the content.

We know mods are used by tournament organizers to add custom graphics and camera controls when streaming matches. Once it's integrated, we can allow specific accounts to play online matches, private matches, and tournaments with Easy Anti-Cheat turned off. We'll offer this option to partners on a case-by-case basis.

We're also building popular mod-inspired features directly into Rocket League, including an option to display MMR in-game, changes to custom training, and an optional flip reset indicator.

Finally, we know some of you love to play on Steam Deck and on Linux operating systems through apps like Proton, and this will still be supported with Easy Anti-Cheat on.

We'll have more to share on Season 22 next month. In the meantime, we're on the lookout for your questions and feedback.